Operations teams have a lot of ground to cover to keep things running smoothly at your organization. They handle maintenance, moves and safety audits. Like other business teams, they have to track and manage requests, along with ensuring that the work actually gets done. And like other teams, handling their processes in a transparent manner, so customers can check the status of their requests, will reduce interruptions and allow them to function more efficiently. So, why not empower your Operations team with a great tool like Jira?

Add Detailed Business Information Without Jira Custom Fields

Some processes are highly specialized and require a lot of process-specific information. Imagine your Operations team is using Jira. The cafeteria would like to use it to handle requests for catering, but a lot of the information they need - menu items, dietary restrictions, etc. - doesn’t really fit in fields that were originally created for software development.

There are a couple of options. Jira is immensely flexible. You can create custom fields, screens and configurations for just about anything. There are a few problems with this though:

Operations teams will have to rely on IT support whenever they wish to create or change one of the processes they manage in Jira.

An endlessly expanding plethora of customizations will become a headache for your Jira Admin to manage, and may eventually have a negative impact on Jira’s performance.

Another option is to ask the folks who are making the requests to put all of the needed details in the description field. This works in theory. The problems is that people don’t always know, or if they do know they don’t always remember, what those needed details are. The best way to get the information you need is to prompt people for each specific item. This is exactly why forms were invented and have persisted as one of the most widely-used business tools ever.

Advantages of Using Forms in Jira

Forms are not new, innovative or sexy. What they are is a tried and true, practical way of gathering data. Along with collecting complete information and freeing you from the need for custom fields, using forms with Jira has several other advantages:

Forms are familiarYour customers know the drill and will understand what you need from them.

Form data is structuredThere’s no need to try to parse out menu items, number of attendees and the delivery address from one description field. Every data point is in it’s own place so you can pull what you need.

Form fields can be formatted and validated to your needsTeams can employ validation to ensure that forms cannot be submitted unless the required fields have been filled out. Teams can also ensure that requests conform to their business rules (for example, no internal catering for events attended by more than 200 people).

The work gets doneInformation gathering is the first step. ProForma forms are backed by a Jira workflow, so the process that the form sets in motion actually gets carried out. And if there’s some internal information that needs to be tracked, you can add multiple forms to an issue.

Form data can be easily reported onWant to see how many breakfast services are ordered for the upcoming week so you can buy the right number of frozen pastries? Download a report.

Getting Business Teams into Jira is Easy with ProForma Forms & Templates

Wondering when your Operations team would find the time to build the forms they need? We’ve given you a head start. Internal catering is just one of the many Operations templates available in the ProForma template library. These processes were designed in consultation with business are experts and can be easily modified by your Operations team, without needing customizations from you!